Barbara O'Neil

Barbara O'Neil was an American actress who worked in film and on stage. Raised largely in Europe, she was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. She broke in through summer stock, then joined the University Players after George Pierce Baker recommended her and she had trained at the Yale School of Drama. Her Broadway debut came in 1932 in a play about Carrie Nation, and in 1954 she took the part of Madam Serena Merle in a Broadway staging of The Portrait of a Lady. She made her screen debut in Stella Dallas (1937), then played Ellen O'Hara, Scarlett O'Hara's mother, in Gone with the Wind (1939). For All This, and Heaven Too (1940), as the jealous Duchesse de Praslin, she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Later credits included I Remember Mama (1948), Secret Beyond the Door (1947), Otto Preminger's Whirlpool (1950) and Angel Face (1953), and The Nun's Story (1959).